Record Numbers of Women Running for Office May Not Mean Big Gains in Congress
It may be the year of the woman in U.S. politics, but that doesn’t mean female candidates have an easy road ahead.
A record number of women have stepped up for U.S. House and Senate races—527 as of the end of April, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with more than a dozen states still accepting new candidates for the November midterms. That’s a 67 percent jump from 2016.
Democratic and Republican Women Registered With the FEC as 2018 Congressional Candidates 👆
The historic jump in major party candidates arises from multiple influences: the potency of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, an expanded bench of women in local and state offices, and—at least among many Democratic women—President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
Mikie Sherrill (D)
Candidate
New Jersey 11th District
“That election was a real slap in the face to a lot of us,” said Mikie Sherrill, a mother of four, ages 6 to 12, who is running as a Democrat for an open suburban New Jersey House seat that Republicans now hold. “Progress wasn’t inevitable.”
Sherrill, 46, had always figured she was doing her part to break some glass ceilings, serving as a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and later a federal prosecutor. One male-dominated job she’d never considered until Clinton’s loss: member of Congress.
Women are competing in 278 out of 435 districts this year, more than double the total in 2000.
Where Women Are Running for House Seats—And Where They're Not
2018
278 House races
2016
2014
2012
204
205
222
2010
2008
2006
197
163
166
2004
2002
2000
163
143
136
2018
278 House races
2016
2014
2012
204
205
222
2010
2008
2006
197
163
166
2002
2000
2004
163
143
136
Where Women Are Running for House Seats—And Where They're Not
Even with the increase, that still leaves large swaths of the country where women aren’t on the ballot. In five states, no Democratic women are running for the House or Senate. There are no Republican women running for Congress in 14 states.
Still, if historical patterns hold, there’s almost certain to be more women in the Capitol when the 116th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2019. That’s because the percentages of women running and women winning usually track closely. Women make up 19.1 percent of the House, but, as of April 30, women comprised 23 percent of this year’s candidate field. If the proportion of winners precisely tracked the candidates this year—and there’s no assurance it will—the House would gain 17 women.
But men, who dominate the field of candidates this year, would still outnumber women in Congress by more than 3-to-1.
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Almost three dozen women have already seen their candidacies end with primary losses, and many more will fall by the wayside as the nominating season gets into full swing this month.
In some key races, a woman is all but certain to replace a man. The two top Republicans and the top Democrat vying for the Arizona Senate seat being vacated by Republican Jeff Flake are women. Texas Democrats Veronica Escobar, a former county judge, and Sylvia Garcia, a state senator, are strong favorites after winning primaries in overwhelmingly Democratic districts left open by Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and retiring Representative Gene Green. They’d also be the first Latinas elected to Congress from Texas.
Related story: In the Year of the Woman, These Are the Races to Watch ⭢
Women are also poised to record gains in statehouses. So far, 78 women have filed to run for governor in the 36 states holding races, more than double the prior record of 34 candidates in 1994, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
More than one-third of those women are Republicans—a higher percentage than GOP women running for the House.
The previous high point for female governors occurred in 2007 when nine women served as their state’s chief executive.
Related story: Record Number of Women Are Running for Governor ⭢
Interviews with female candidates and political leaders suggest a significant part of the influx in women running has been among Democrats eager to take action following Trump’s surprise victory. Many said they expected to witness the nation’s first female president and instead got Trump, whom they view as sexist and anti-woman.
“It really began with the inauguration,” said Crystal K. Perkins, executive director of the Democratic Party in Texas, where the number of women congressional candidates tripled from 2016. “Women have to be asked to run more than men, so to see them come organically to the table and want to run was just really incredible and inspiring.”
Almost three-fourths of the women running are Democrats, and they’re a central element of the party’s strategy for regaining control of the House and, perhaps, the Senate, which would end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.
A Widening Gap Between Number of Women Running as Democrats or Republicans
As recently as 2010, the split between parties was nearly even
As recently as 2010, the split between parties was nearly even
As recently as 2010, the split between parties was nearly even
Some Republicans, in turn, embrace the president. Representative Diane Black is running for governor in Tennessee as a staunch Trump supporter in a state the president carried by 26 percentage points.
Diane Black (R)
Candidate
Governor of Tennessee
“I thought this is my opportunity to do what I would have loved to have done eight years ago before I went to Congress,” Black said in an interview. “And that is having a stronger voice in setting policy for my own state.” Three women, including one Republican, have filed to fill the seat Black is vacating to run for governor.
Sometimes sheer numbers count. While the national party tends to focus on recruitment in the most competitive seats, Perkins said Texas Democrats worked to recruit candidates for every seat, including many women. “What we did was really lean into the environment,” she said.
It seemed to work. Fifty-three women competed in the March primary—three times the total in 2016. Most states have had a similar increase.
Percentage of U.S. House Candidates Who Are Women, by State
- 2000—2016 average
- 2018
State
Seats
0%
25
50
75
100
0%
25
50
75
100
State
Seats
0%
25
50
75
100
State
Seats
If Texas is just one example, active recruitment could pay dividends. Just three of 36 House members there are women, but at least 15 Democratic women will be on November’s ballot—and at least a few of them are thought to have a good chance to win their races.
Jan Schakowsky (D)
Representative
Illinois 9th District
“I am feeling very optimistic that we’re going to increase our percentages in the House,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois. “This is, I do believe, a year of the woman and maybe an era of the woman.”
Plenty of hurdles remain. Some women are struggling to raise as much money as male opponents who have more robust professional networks, while others are finding themselves competing against multiple women, only to lose to a man in a primary election.
Liuba Grechen Shirley (D)
Candidate
New York 2nd District
“There are a lot of barriers,” said first-time congressional candidate Liuba Grechen Shirley, a Democrat who is seeking to challenge Republican Representative Peter King in a district that includes part of Long Island.
Shirley, a 36-year-old community organizer and nonprofit leader, has asked the Federal Election Commission if she can use campaign funds to pay for the care of her 1-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. Before running for office, she worked from home and cared for them herself.
“This request to the FEC, if it’s approved, is a game changer because it will change the way that working Americans get involved in politics,” she said. “It will change the way that parents of young children get involved.”
Dora Kingsley Vertenten, a public policy professor at University of Southern California, put it this way when asked what can be done to get more women to run for Congress: “Money. It’s like anything else, it just takes money.”
Signs that Republicans may have trouble in November and the unusually large number of open congressional seats this year—more than 50—are major contributors to a big field of Democratic women, Vertenten said.
Republican women, meanwhile, are looking at the president’s historically low poll ratings as well as other headwinds for the GOP and deciding this might not be the year to run.
Women who have served in Congress say many women in the past decided against running because of the challenges of balancing family life with what can be weekly commutes to Washington.
Ellen Tauscher (D)
Former California
Representative
“There isn’t much family friendly in the schedule,” said Ellen Tauscher, a former Democratic congresswoman from California who also served in the State Department under Clinton.
Tauscher was elected about five years after the contentious Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas that featured an all-male panel questioning law professor Anita Hill about her allegations of sexual harassment from the Supreme Court nominee. The following year, 1992, was widely hailed as “The Year of the Woman” after a record 24 women were elected to the House for their first time and the number of women in the Senate grew to six from two.
“We have to increase the level of women running at every level of government, so that we have a ladder and a succession plan,” Tauscher said.
Carla Nelson (R)
Candidate
Minnesota 1st District
Republican Carla Nelson is one of those women who has worked her way up, from the Minnesota House to her current post in state Senate. She’s now running for Congress from a district that includes Rochester and the Mayo Clinic.
Nelson had been recruited to run in 2014 and 2016 by the National Republican Congressional Committee. When she was asked again this year—the seat she’s competing for is being vacated by a Democrat running for governor—she said yes.
“It’s a mess out there,” she said of Washington’s gridlock. “Women, in general, are problem solvers and multi-taskers and we get things done.”
While she agrees with Trump’s policies, Nelson said she thinks his “communications style and comments have been a concern to women” and that they’ve helped motivate Democratic women to run.
In a few districts this year, women crowded into a race and ended up shut out. That’s what happened in an upscale suburban congressional district west and northwest of Chicago where there were five female Democrats on the March primary ballot and all ended up losing to a man who won by fewer than three percentage points. The runner-up, Kelly Mazeski, thinks she would have had a better shot if fewer women were in the race.
Kelly Mazeski (D)
Candidate
Illinois 6th District
“We need more representation from women, but having so many running and splitting up the vote, allowed a man to get through and win it,” Mazeski said. “It’s an issue.”
You can get a better sense of the hurdles ahead for these women when you consider their path from announcing their candidacy to the primaries to Election Day in November.
Women:
"Remaining"
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"Out"
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"Elected"
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Remaining Seats
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There are 527 Democratic and Republican women running for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate this year, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. They're competing for a combined 304 seats in Congress.
Among the candidates are 83 incumbents seeking another term in office. Suppose 2018 really is the “year of the woman” and these incumbents are all re-elected. You're left with 444 women running for office. Even in the most optimistic scenario, most won't make it to Washington—for a variety of reasons.
For starters, most incumbent women aren’t running for Congress unopposed—55 other women are vying for those seats, too. If every incumbent woman is elected, their challengers are all knocked out of the race.
Another 47 women are challenging male incumbents within their own party. Incumbents rarely lose primary elections—about 1 percent lost a primary race last cycle, according to the Brookings Institution. So it’s a reasonable guess that these intra-party challengers lose this year, too.
What’s more, 82 of the remaining primary races have more than one woman on the ballot. In most states, only one candidate from each party can move on to the general election. Even if you assume that a woman wins every one of those primaries—a tall order—it means another 121 women will be out.
But winning a primary is only half the battle. More than half of the remaining candidates are women running against a male incumbent in the general election. Incumbents usually win, but some are vulnerable in wave elections. In 2010—when Republicans flipped 66 Democratic seats and took the House—incumbents won 85 percent of their races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Apply that success rate to 2018 and 20 more women would be elected, but 115 would be out.
That still leaves 60 open seats in the House and Senate. Of those races, 26 will feature a Democratic woman versus a Republican woman—guaranteeing that a woman will head to Capitol Hill, but also meaning another 26 women are out.
For the final 34 open seats, political reality sets in. Few of these House and Senate races are particularly competitive. Most are considered safe bets for Democrats or Republicans—and almost certainly a loss for their challengers. Of the remaining candidates, 10 women are major underdogs in races that are “not considered competitive" by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
That leaves 24 women running in competitive open races. Let’s say they’re all elected, a best-case scenario for those candidates. If all these things happened—an unlikely proposition—you’d have 153 women winning in November. Add them to women senators who are not up for re-election and you have 163 women in Congress next January. It would be a record, but still only 30 percent of the seats on Capitol Hill.
This scenario assumes that a lot of races break a woman’s way. It’s more likely that many of these women will lose primary or general election races to men. Some incumbent women are running in tough races, too, so it’s no sure thing that they’ll all win. But our extremely rosy estimates underscore the main problem: you’ll need drastically more women candidates to approach a roughly equal number of men and women in Congress.
The president of Emily’s List, the largest national organization devoted to electing female candidates, is telling women not to despair if they don’t win this year.
“Once that seed is planted it doesn’t stop growing,” Stephanie Schriock said at a recent event in Washington. “I think we’re really on the verge of a sea change in the numbers of women that are engaging at all levels.”